


Flower Crowns

by oodal (softkyun)



Category: Shingeki no Kyojin | Attack on Titan
Genre: Angst, Character Death, Death, Flower Crowns, M/M, Memorials, One-Sided Love, Spoilers, major angst
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-03-23
Updated: 2014-03-23
Packaged: 2018-01-16 18:34:12
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,075
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1357681
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/softkyun/pseuds/oodal
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Levi finds another way to honor the dead, and after Jean joins in with him one afternoon, it becomes a tradition.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Flower Crowns

Flowers weren't always easy to come by. The territory that the Scouting Legion moved across beyond the walls was vast, often unexplored, and dangerous. Flowers weren't typically at the top of the priority list, but Levi always knew what he was on the lookout for. He kept the book tucked into the saddlebag on his horse, waiting to be opened, waiting for his eyes to scan the pages. This time, the need for flowers as they returned back to their headquarters was pressing; Levi's heart pounded with anxiety, even if the furrowed eyebrows and small frown of his expression gave none of his feelings away to anyone else who was in the vicinity. His hands tightened around the reins of his horse, and he recalled the last page he'd looked at, with a name written beneath the flower's scientific one.

Petra.

Levi's chest tightened as he thought about it, thought about how he hadn't had the chance to pull the patch from her uniform, how one of the few ways he had of honoring her was left null and void. Hell, he couldn't do it for any of his squad; his precious, hand-picked comrades, gone in one fell swoop. Levi was used to dealing with tragedy. He'd been practically immersed with it, as the rest of this damned human race had, since he had been born. He knew that it was mistake to let people in, to let them know who you were. He knew it was a mistake to let himself relax when Petra made a kind-hearted comment. He ached to hear it again; her memory lingered behind his eyelids, her gentle smile, the way the breeze caught her cloak and how she turned to the rest of the squad with always, always, a well-meaning remark.

He had not loved her, but she had been his family. They had all been his family, and now, they were gone, without even a patch for Levi to keep tucked with him, to honor their strength, their sacrifice, their very existence.

The dark-haired man knew that he had another way to do it, but it was one that he hadn't done so recently. His fingers ached with the memory of this habit, this way of grieving, and his temples ached as his narrowed eyes searched out for the flower that would help him accomplish this. He had already decided on the flower that would be the most like Petra; he had picked out flowers for all of his fallen comrades, if only so that he could make a flower crown. Such a trivial, silly thing - he had made them as a child, with the flowers that grew outside their house, more often than not the buds of weeds that shouldn't be there, anyways. It had become an impractical habit after his patch-collecting had begun; after all, flower crowns couldn't be transported safely like patches, and they were more tedious to make. Levi didn't always have the time to sit down and weave the stems together.

He would make time, now.

His eyes settled on the flowers that he needed to find; amaryllis grew in a small patch at the base of a tree, blooms of bright red, starbursts in a world that Levi had long started to feel was colorless. He pulled gently on the reins of his horse, directed the creature to move over towards, and when they were close enough, he stopped it with a couple of quiet, murmured words. If he spoke too loudly, Levi felt as if his voice might betray him, and even though no one had said anything about their leader's frequent stops on the trip home, he didn't want to give them any reason to. 

With wet eyes, he cut the flowers, the last he would need on this trip, and with quivering hands, he put them into the roomy saddle bag, to join the rest of the blooms that he had collected.

He didn't meet Hanji's eyes, and ignored the concerned frown on her eyes, as he rejoined the formation.

\---

"Shitty brat."

Levi mumbled to himself as he watched Jaeger wander into headquarters. Most of his friends were here, now, the Trainee Squad that had joined up with the Scouting Legion. They'd had more than expected this year, but they all seemed like talented, apt kids, even if Jaeger was loud, even if Arlert looked more like he belonged in a daycare than in the battlefield, even if Brauss' obsession with food was enough to make Levi feel a little bit on edge. He understood obsessions. He understood the compulsive, pressing needs to do things, but the food...

Whatever.

Giving his horse a quiet pat on the flank, he leaned in and tried to steady himself. He was exhausted. Sleep came few and far between for him, these days; he had never slept well in the first place, but now it was worse. Perhaps it would've helped if he would've been able to see the faces of his comrades when they died, to gain closure that he desperately needed. Instead, his brain was left to work the scenarios on its own, dreaming up deluded nightmares where Petra bled from her through and Auruo had his limbs snapped, one by one.

He was so tired that he almost dozed off a little bit where he stood, with his cheek pressed against his filthy horse. He pulled back, set his jaw, and pulled out a cloth to wipe his face before he released the hooks on the saddle bag with the flowers. Everyone else was inside, as far as he could tell, and so he moved towards the large oak tree that grew outside of headquarters. Levi settled beneath it (although not after laying out a blanket), and gradually began to pull out the flowers that he had picked.

Amaryllis, for Petra. For Erd, borage. For Gunter, daffodils. Primrose, for Auruo. They had died weeks ago, but only know did he have the time to honor them.

Levi hated the way his hands shook as he laid them out in front of him, the way that they seemed so frail, how difficult it was as he tied the stems and worked them around the delicate wire hoops he'd put together. When he finished Petra's, he actually had to pause, because he had pricked himself twice with wire at the end.

Setting it down, he exhaled softly, and pressed his tender fingertips to his temples with a quiet sigh. 

Deep breaths, he told himself. Take them for those who can't.

Levi didn't get much time to settle himself, because someone spoke up behind him. The only thing that betrayed his startled nature was the speed with which he pulled his hands away from his head; otherwise, the turn of his head to glare at the offended behind him was painstakingly slow, and his eyes narrowed despite the pounding of his heart.

"What was that, Kirschtein?" Levi asked, voice low and dangerous. Jean's eyes widened, and he shifted his weight from one foot to the other before oepning his mouth again. Levi hadn't been paying enough attention to catch the first thing he said, but he wondered if he was repeating himself, or...

"Sir, I just asked what you were doing." 

Levi resisted the urge to swear under his breath. He had thought that everyone had gone inside, and now here he was, being caught doing one of the most embarrassing things ever, most likely. Levi didn't get flustered often, but he sure as hell felt it as he glanced back to the crowns, then up to Jean, who towered over him in every aspect, especially considering that Levi was sitting down at the moment.

"Use your damn brain and put two and two together." The older of the two snapped defensively, because he really didn't like his private time being intruded on. At the way the kid's face fell, Levi felt a little but guilty, and he raised a hand to massage at his forehead, feeling the exhausted headache he'd been harboring only starting to multiply.

"Memorials." He spat, surprising himself even a little bit as he shared a detail he considered a little too intimate to be throwing around to whoever. Something about the kid just made him feel like he should share, though, and with the way Jean's shoulders sagged, he knew something was weighing on him. Levi didn't say a word, although he maintained his stare. Jean floundered beneath it. He had only been curious about what the older man was doing; to make flower crowns was a peculiar and almost childish thing, it seemed, and then he'd watched the care and attention to detail that went into them, and... He'd grown anxious to ask, and so he had. He hadn't expected the burning intensity of their leader's gaze on him, but he should've.

"F-for fallen comardes?" Jean cursed the stutter in his voice, the unsure, tentative tones that he wasn't used to hearing from himself. Even as he asked the question, his mind was already drifting from Levi's expression to a much softer one, an expression of gentle encouragement, of warm-whiskey eyes and freckles that would look ridiculous on anyone else. He felt his hands twitch at his side, felt the tell-tale tightening at his throat, and was ready to flee the scene when Levi spoke up.

"Sit." He commanded quietly, and although Jean hesitated, he did. Levi didn't know why he was doing this; didn't know why he'd decided to let him settle on the already-small blanket beside him. At least he didn't crush the flowers. They'd all lost people, this Levi knew; he'd seen plenty of people torn apart by the death of their comrades, but he hadn't expected Kirschtein to be one. The kid reminded him of himself; reminded Levi of his bold, younger days, of his hard-headedness (sure, he still had it now, but that wasn't quite the point here) and of how unlikely it seemed that either of them become leaders. 

With a quiet, knowing sigh, Levi glanced towards Jean, who sat stiff as a board on the blanket.

"Relax, brat. Tell me about them."

Jean looked as if he'd been caught with his hand in the cookie jar, and Levi thought for a second that he might stand up and leave, but instead, with haunted eyes that Levi had gotten used to seeing on himself in the mirror, Jean spoke up.

"I see him still, in my head, the way his skin, pale with death, made his freckles stand out even more. It was so wrong to see him like that, without a smile on his face, without that weird half-amused look in his eyes. He... he'd always been the one encouraging me. He told me I'd be a great leader. He was an understated trainee. Great in his own right, seventh in the class." 

The soft choking sound that Jean made caused Levi's hands to clench around the wire he'd picked up at some point.

"It wasn't right for him to die without a person around to see him. Damnit, he wanted to join the Military Police, and not just because he was a lazy ass like the rest of them, because he really thought - really wanted to help keep order in the city, y'know? And he died in that stupid city, dead when Trost was invaded. I decided then I was joining the Survery Corps. I... I thought he'd be proud of me. That I could take his death and honor it."

Levi said nothing about the tears that had spilled over, tracking down Jean's face even in his desperate attempts to wipe them away.

"His name was Marco Bodt, and he was my best friend. God, I loved his stupid freckles, his stupid encouragement, the way he always knew just what to say and I never did. He always told me was I the leader, but he was - he was the leader. Not me. I'll never forgive myself for letting him die like that. Why the fuck didn't I make sure he stayed with me? Why?" 

Jean lost it then, and Levi kept his silence, letting Jean continue to cry, letting the tears speak for all that need to be said. When Jean's breathing began to regulate itself, his face embarrassed and burning, Levi wondered briefly if he'd talked to anyone else about it; it didn't seem like he had, though, and Levi wasn't going to prod. Once enough time had passed, and everything seemed to calm down, Levi jerked his head to the right and gestured towards a patch of purple hyacinth. It was straggly, not exactly the prettiest, but it was at least there.

"Go pick that. Purple hyacinth blooms are apology flowers." He told Jean, and Jean, wrecked with guilt and pain, looked at him once before he stumbled to his feet, in disbelief but with the same numb sort of look that Levi knew too well. He watched the kid pick them, and spent the next minutes showing him how to make them with the wire, how to put together a flower crown memorial.

They worked in silence after that. Levi had two left to finish to Jean's one, for Marco, but Jean's attempts were clumsy and slow in comparison to Levi's agile hands. Jean pricked himself a couple of times, but got through it; when they were finished, they sat with four flower crowns, and Jean glanced over to him as the sun began to set.

"Can we do this again?" He asked, sounding significantly calmer than he had before, more at ease, but perhaps a little more pained. Levi glanced down at his hands, red and unstable, and rest his chin on one of them. 

"Next year." He spoke quietly, and the two of them parted.

\---

The two of them settled down quietly next year, and when Jean murmured Connie Springer's name, Levi gave him a bunch of jasmine. He'd already been planning on making one for the brat, anyways.

Jean didn't ask why Levi was making more than last year, and Levi didn't say anything when Jean sat sobbing over the purple hyacinth, or when he got tears on his blanket.

\---

The year after that, there are so many more flower crowns to make that Levi slid the book towards Jean, rather than coming up with the flowers for him. Levi wondered when the two of them became so numb, and wondered if that was the painful price of leadership; to shoulder the burdens of your comrades, to bend under their weight, to snap like flower stems, to prick like wire, to be so beautiful, but so, so painful.

\---

The following year, Jean saw a sight he never thought he was going to see.

He watched as Levi bent over the scattered blooms of jonquil, the yellow petals sickeningly ominous against the pale color of the worn-out blanket. It doesn't take very long to make the connects between the flowers; he remembered the way that Levi's hands had tightly clutched the outside of the parchment paper, the way he'd had to clear his voice uncharacteristically multiple times as he read through its contents. It was perhaps the most emotional display they'd ever gotten out of their leader, the few of them who had known him for so long, that is - barring Jean, none of them had seen those dark eyes glossy with tears. 

In the moments that Levi had read that letter, his subordinates were reminded of just how small their leader really was. Yet and still, they'd known better than to follow behind him after his voice had cracked on the final sentence,

_"Erwin Smith is dead."_

No one asked questions. No one followed. Now, Jean stood behind the painfully small back of his superior - no, they were equals now, in ranking, although he would always think of Levi as above him - and he watched it shake. He wondered how humanity had expected such a small man to take all their burdens, to be the carrying vessel of their hopes, their fears, their adoration, their hatred. Levi was just a man, and Jean knew himself that it was easy to forget.

It wasn't so easy now as the small, muffled sounds of Levi's sobs reached him. Jean had never been a master with words; he settled down beside Levi and awkwardly rest an arm around Levi. Perhaps it was a testament to Levi's mental state of mind that he didn't move away from Jean's touch; he simply remained, doubled over, hot tears dripping down his face. He didn't think about how disgusting it was that his nose was running, but he could barely get his hands to work as he fiddled with the jonquil stems, as he struggled to breathe properly.

Levi had been waiting since the day he'd read that letter to be able to make this crown, and now he was here, and he couldn't do it. His hands shook too violently, his vision was too blurry; he couldn't do it. He ached to make it, for some sort of closure. Erwin had left him nothing to remember him by, except for a couple of old letters and an old shirt. Levi knew he shouldn't so devastated, so hurt by this - but he was. He needed to make this crown. 

He didn't protest when Jean's hands settled on his, steadying them so that he would stop making himself bleed with the wire. He didn't protest when Jean finished it off, and he certainly didn't protest when Jean helped him through the rest of them, too. 

The stack of flower crowns felt unholy, now. Too many, too much, so light and so heavy. Jean tried not to think of it, but what were these crowns but bodies stacked in front of them, resting on the blanket so innocently?

They sat together until Levi's tears dried, and without much other ceremony, and with no words, the two of them parted.

\---

The next year, Jean sighed as he smoothed the edge of the blanket. His fingers ached with the finishing of the flower crowns, but he only had one left to finish. He picked up the poppy bloom and twirled it in his fingers, bringing it up to his nose to smell.

He exhaled quietly, glanced towards the empty spot on the blanket next to him, and began Levi's crown in silence.

**Author's Note:**

> notes about flower meanings:  
> petra - amaryllis - pride, timidity, kindness  
> erd - borage - courage, strength  
> gunter - daffodils - respect  
> auruo - primrose - confidence, personality  
> marco - purple hyacinth - apology, i'm sorry, forgive me  
> connie - jasmine - friendliness, amiability  
> erwin - jonquil - love me, one-sided affection, desire for a return of affection  
> levi - poppy - eternal sleep, final rest, oblivion, consolation
> 
> also, thanks to my lovely lil short stack for some inspiration ~~


End file.
